Mar 29, 2011

His Retirement Plan vs My Retirement Plan


Here is the latest e-mail that I received about The Joy of Not Working:

    Ernie,

    I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed The Joy of Not Working on the beaches of Playa Del Carmen recently.

    It makes a lot of sense!

    A lot of the things you mention like the North American work ethic of living to work instead of working to live. How workaholics [don't have fun at work and] actually produce less than normal workers, having coffee breaks to re-juvenate yourself, pursuing more leisure, fun activities etc. [real success] are things I always believed in.

    Thx

    Doug

    PS: My youngest brother retired at 47 and has never looked back, or regretted it!



Here is the latest e-mail about How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free from a gentleman whose retirement plan is different from my retirement plan.

    Hey Ernie,

    Just an update [to my e-mail earlier about How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free].

    My company went public with my retirement last week and we have named my successor. I have decided not to call it retirement but rather the death of "corporate Jay" my friends are holding a wake instead of a retirement party. April fools day is the last day of my corporate life! Btw I could use a couple of snappy responses to "your too young to retire" and "what are you going to do all day"

    ... Jay:

This was my response to Jay:


Congratulations on your retirement: I don't believe that you need any retirement advice.


From my book The Joy of Being Retired: 365 Reasons Why You Will Love Retirement here are 10 of the reasons why you should love retirement.


  1. Retirement allows you to pursue your first love — which is living life to the fullest!

  2. You get to appreciate one of life’s great pleasures — lots of time on your hands.

  3. By having retired early, you don’t have to wind up like so many people who retire too late — they have given so much of themselves to their companies that they don’t have anything left in the tank for their retirement years.

  4. If a Meyer-Briggs professional personality assessment test given by your employer indicated that you were best suited for retirement, you can now put your skills and talent to good use.

  5. You can wake up in the morning with nothing to do and by bedtime be in a position of only having done only half of it — with no consequences.

  6. When you take early retirement from a stressful job you immediately look about seventeen years younger — simply because you feel about seventeen years younger.

  7. Working long hours can sometimes be rewarding, without doubt, but so can goofing off and enjoying life. As they say in Spain, “How nice it is to do nothing all day and then rest afterward.”

  8. You get to spend a lot more time with your spouse and learn how to compromise, how to pick the right battles, and how not to kill each other.

  9. You have all the time in the world to prove The Law of Napping — A Body at Rest Remains at Rest.

  10. You can now preach the shortcomings of the work ethic and proclaim to the world —as the great philosopher Bertrand Russell once did — that “the morality of work is the morality of slaves and the world has no need for more slavery.”

Mar 23, 2011

Reader Says Everyone Should Read How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free



Here is one of the latest e-mails that I received about The World's Best Retirement Book:


    ----- Original Message ----
    From: Wendy J.
    To: vipbooks
    Sent: Wed, March 23, 2011 11:33:07 AM
    Subject: Interested in "The Joy of Being Retired"

    Hi!

    First let me say, I LOVE your book How to Retire Wild, Happy, & Free! Even though I'm only 25, I think that everyone should read it, no matter what age you are. I'm telling all of my family about it!

    I wanted to inquire about the cost of your new book The Joy of Being Retired, that I found on your website.

    I do marketing for my husband's financial business, and I was planning on giving away the How to Retire Wild book (I just bought 5 on Amazon), but now I'd like to compare the 2 and see which one would be best for me to give out (especially if it's cheaper).

    I'd first like to read one before I buy them as promotional pieces. Can you tell me your rates and how I could buy one?

    Thanks!

    Wendy Jordan

    p.s. I'll be writing an Amazon review for you here soon! ;)
This was my response:

    Hi Wendy:

    Thanks for your comment about How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free and for having purchased 5 copies.

    Regarding The Joy of Being Retired, the book has not been published yet and won't be for some time because I am working on another project.

    You mentioned doing a review for How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free on Amazon.com.

    It would be great if you can post a 5-star review as soon as possible since the last review is rather negative.

    If you do this, I will send you one of my other books as a thank-you gift.

    It's not necessary to write a lengthy, formal review — a paragraph or two with 5-stars would be fine.

    Here's a direct link to the Amazon page for How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free.

    Also, if possible, can you place the review on How to Retire Happy Page on BarnesandNoble.com.

    If you place this review, I will send you an autographed copy of my latest book: Career Success Without a Real Job: The Career Book for People Too Smart to Work in Corporations. (See PDF with attached sample material.) This is not strictly a retirement book but it is a great book for retirees who want to continue working, but not in a corporation.

    Alternatively, I can send you a copy of The Joy of Not Working.

    Once you place the review, send me your address so that I can send you one of my other books.

    Incidentally, The Facebook Page for How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free is at this link and you can "Like" it if you would like.

    If you want to hookup on Facebook, see Ernie Zelinski on Facebook

    Many thanks and so long for now,

    Ernie J. Zelinski
    Best-Selling Author, Innovator, and Creativity Consultant
    Author of the Bestseller How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free
    (Over 125,000 copies sold and published in 9 languages)
    and the International Bestseller The Joy of Not Working
    (Over 250,000 copies sold and published in 17 languages)

Mar 8, 2011

Retirement - The End of Corporate Life


I received this e-mail the other day from a guy named Jay who had contacted me before about his retirement plan which was quite different from my retirement plan.


    The end of my corporate life

    Hey Ernie,

    Just an update.

    My company went public with my retirement last week and we have named my successor. I have decided not to call it retirement but rather the death of "corporate Jay" my friends are holding a wake instead of a retirement party. April fools day is the last day of my corporate life! Btw I could use a couple of snappy responses to "you are too young to retire" and "what are you going to do all day?"

    Jay:
This was my response:


    Congratulations on your retirement: I am sure you don't neeed any retirement planning resources.

    From my book The Joy of Being Retired: 365 Reasons Why You Will Love Retirement here are 10 of the reasons why you should love retirement.


      1. Retirement allows you to pursue your first love — which is living life to the fullest!

      2. You get to appreciate one of life’s great pleasures — lots of time on your hands.

      3. By having retired early, you don’t have to wind up like so many people who retire too late — they have given so much of themselves to their companies that they don’t have anything left in the tank for their retirement years.

      4. If a Meyer-Briggs professional personality assessment test given by your employer indicated that you were best suited for retirement, you can now put your skills and talent to good use.

      5. You can wake up in the morning with nothing to do and by bedtime be in a position of only having done only half of it — with no consequences.

      6. When you take early retirement from a stressful job you immediately look about seventeen years younger — simply because you feel about seventeen years younger.

      7. Working long hours can sometimes be rewarding, without doubt, but so can goofing off and enjoying life. As they say in Spain, “How nice it is to do nothing all day and then rest afterward.”

      8. You get to spend a lot more time with your spouse and learn how to compromise, how to pick the right battles, and how not to kill each other.

      9. You have all the time in the world to prove The Law of Napping — A Body at Rest Remains at Rest.

      10. You can now preach the shortcomings of the work ethic and proclaim to the world — as the great philosopher Bertrand Russell once did — that “the morality of work is the morality of slaves and the world has no need for more slavery.”

Mar 6, 2011

My Retirement Websites Not Affected by Google Algorithm Change


The latest Google Algorithm Change has sparked a lot of interest and coverage by Internet Marketers and popular website-related media.

This was the comment that I posted on the blog post Google Search Engine Algorithm Changes:

    I agree that scraped content is stolen content and that it is good thing that Google is trying to rectify the problem.

    It is about time. People who steal content (and I have had a lot of retirement content stolen by people with really low integrity from my retirement websites and retirement blogs) are saying to the world that they lack integrity, class, and execellence and at the same time have absolute no creativity or motivation to create something that truly benefits humanity. Quite pathetic, wouldn't you say? It is because of people like this that the world doesn't work in better harmony as it should.

    I have not had any problems with my retirement websites due to the latest Algorithim change by Google because I have great retirement content on my retirement websites. In fact, for one of the most important search terms (retirement quotes) that has helped me sell over 125,000 copies of my book How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free, I have the #1 spot on Google, but I also have the #8 spot on the first page, and 3 of the spots on the second page. In other words, I have 5 of the top 20 spots on Google.

    For another important search term (retirement poems) I have the #1 spot and the #2 spot. And remember, I can't duplicate the #1 website to get the #2 spot with another website. The #2 spot by the way is a Squidoo page (Retirement Poems) which was not affected by the Algorithm change.

    I have a lot of other important spots on Google for important retirement search terms such as retirement jobs, my retirement plan, and retirement sentiments. How do I get these top spots on Google. As Seth Godin says, "Being average is for losers. Being better than 98 percent of the competition used to be fine. In the world of Google, though, it's useless. If you are not going to get to #1, you might as well quit right now."

    Ernie J. Zelinski,
    Author of How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free
    (Over 125,000 copies sold and published in 9 languages)
    and The Joy of Not Working
    (Over 250,000 copies sold and published in 17 languages)

Note: See How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free on Facebook:

Mar 2, 2011

Advertising on My Retirement Websites


I get quite a few inquiries about advertising on my many retirement quotes websites. This one started with an inquiry about the Money Cafe:


    ----- Original Message -----
    From: chris l.
    To: vipbooks
    Sent: Mon, February 28, 2011 5:22:32 AM
    Subject: Advertising on The Money Cafe

    Hi

    I was hoping to get some information from you regarding advertising on your site. I am namely interested in posting a guest article, and/or text links, but I am open to anything really. Would this be possible?

    I look forward to hearing from you and thanks for your time :-)

    Kind Regards,
    Chris
This was my reply:
    On 1 March 2011 00:45, Ernie Zelinski wrote:

    Chris:

    Regarding posting a guest article, I just agreed to this with some woman and I am sorry I did.

    The article she submitted is so lame, so generic, that I will be embarrased to have it on my website. Guess this is why my books have sold over 650,000 copies worldwide - because I create great content. Results don't lie, in other words.

    I have come to the conclusion that I have enough great content from my 15 or so books that is much, much better than 95 percent of what people are going to be able to create.

    Regarding placing a text-based ad, I normally don't accept text-based ads on the homepage of my websites.

    I do accept ads on other websites of mine, however. ( See some of my other websites below my signature).

    For example, in October I accepted a payment of net $193.90US (after deductions by PayPal) from Total Marketing for a one-year link to Retirement Jobs on the Real Success Website

    See the paragraph as indicated below with the link in "hearing aids":

    Incidentally, speaking of AARP, the organization claims to have found the secret to getting hearing aids into all the ears of the millions of baby boomers who need them, as market penetration rates continue to be lower than one would expect given the need. Of course, better hearing should help baby boomers keep their jobs longer or find a second career in retirement.

    A week later I accepted another payment of $227.88US net (after deductions by PayPal) for a text-based ad on the Retirement Quotes Webpage on The Joy of Not Working website.

    See the retirement quote at the top of the webpage as indicated below with the link in "hearing aids":

    One of the best hearing aids a [retired] man can have is an attentive wife.
    — Groucho Marx

    Incidentally, what I liked about Total Marketing is that they were professional and they paid promptly, unlike most of the companies or individuals who contact me about wanting to purchase text-based ads.

    If you would like to consider purchasing a text-based ad on any of my webpages similar to those purchased by Total Marketing, please let me know.

    Many thanks and so long for now,

    Ernie J. Zelinski
    Best-Selling Author, Innovator, and Creativity Consultant
    Author of the Bestseller How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free
    (Over 125,000 copies sold and published in 9 languages)
    and the International Bestseller The Joy of Not Working
    (Over 250,000 copies sold and published in 17 languages)

This is the response that I received from Chris:
    ----- Original Message -----
    From: chris
    To: Ernie Zelinski
    Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2011 4:25 AM
    Subject: Re: Advertising on The Money Cafe

    Hi Ernie

    Thanks for your detailed response, I totally understand what you are saying. There are some substandard people out there - this is a dodgy industry.

    Rest assured though, I am a man of my word. I was hoping to work with you on possible placing a homepage link on your Retirement Quotes Cafe site. Are you open to this idea?

    The most I could offer you would be $30 a month payment, which would be paid monthly via paypal subscription. We are looking to place the link indefinitely so we have no plans to remove the link whatsoever after any length of time.

    If you aren't familiar with paypal subscription, it's a great way to ensure we pay and that payment is sent to you without fail.

    I hope you can work with me on this and I look forward to hearing from you again.

    Kind Regards,
    Chris
This was my response to Chris: